Hormones, Antibiotics, and the Safety of Dairy Pro... Dairy products, especially milk, are part of the daily diet for most people. Milk is the primary food for children and an important part of diet for growing individuals and adults. Given the demand of the rapidly growing population, cattle have been injected with synthetic hormones to increase milk production. In the Unites States, about 80% of commercial cattle farms use hormones for increasing milk production. That...

Oil Input in Agriculture... The recent worldwide increase in the price of liquid fuels (petrol and diesel etc.) has implications for all walks of life including the agricultural sector. Being the most popular form of energy that drives the mechanical means of production and other agricultural activities (supplying and processing etc), oil is an important form of input energy in agriculture. Greater affordability of oil accelerates its use as farm...

Rich with Farming... Economic prosperity of many countries directly depends on the productivity of its agricultural sector. This applies to many developing countries, like those in Asia and Africa. For developed nations that own a considerable area of cultivable land, like the USA, good farming contributes significantly to the country’s economic profile. The relation between agriculture and economy runs both ways: better farming strengthens...

Canned Food: Good or Bad?... Thinking of healthy food at once brings to mind the long-heard cry for fresh food. No questioning of the popularity of fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat when it comes to health-friendly food. What is still under debate is canned stuff. Is it safe to eat canned food? And also, is canned food as nutritious as fresh food? Despite, the innumerable writings and gossip against the use of canned food, there is good reason to...

Disease-Free Crops in Green Farming... Healthy communities, whether of humans or any other living forms, have no place for diseases. In eco-friendly communities, growing disease-free crops is the main focus of farming. It is true that microbes are part of our ecological space but those bad ones, which have evolved to flourish by destroying crops, are never welcome. Shutting them out is integral to green living. How do we manage it? Following are some common...

Growing in Wisdom with Organic Farming... Healthy food and eco-friendly production account for the increasing popularity of organic farming in modern societies. What is more is that farmers in an organic farming community get a better know-how of the way nature works. Such techniques of natural farming probably originated in the earliest horticultural societies and were common knowledge in subsequent agricultural communities, before the advent of mechanical cultivation...

Fitness Problems in Rural Communities... Rural communities enjoy proximity to nature in environment and lifestyle, generally believed to be comparatively free of stress and more health-friendly. However, keeping up with modern facilities related to urban life has long started affecting rural communities in somewhat subtle ways. One of these concerns is the health and fitness of rural population. For example, though living in more environmental-friendly surroundings,...

A Brief Overview of Foodborne Diseases... Foodborne diseases include all those illnesses, infectious or noninfectious, that are caused by eating unhealthy food, i.e. food carrying harmful microbes and/or other pathogenic or toxic content. So far, we know that more than 200 different diseases are caused by unhealthy foods. While most other diseases affect certain populations or groups of people with particular lifestyle or other variables, foodborne diseases can...

Living by Agriculture... Agricultural practice is generally believed to have started around ten thousand years (BC), first on a small scale and then, around 5500 BC, practiced as intensive farming. Archeological evidence suggests that the transition from hunting-gathering to agricultural societies was gradual and, in some regions, developed almost independently including the Babylon, Syria, India, and China. Developed through the ages by different...

Balance of Work and Benefit in a Modern Kibbutz... Kibbutzim are a living example of the communal spirit that has been central to green living communities. Starting entirely with traditional, rural-style agriculture, Kibbutzim have increasingly been subject to financial stresses off and on during their one hundred years of adherence to socialist ideals. This is no wonder since most of the world’s economy, including that of the agricultural sector, is controlled by a...